Quote 4
Be
not afeard. The isle is full of noises,
Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices
That, if I then had waked after long sleep
Will make me sleep again; and then in dreaming
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked
I cried to dream again (III.ii.130–138).
This speech is Caliban’s explanation
to Stephano and Trinculo of mysterious music that they hear by magic.
Though he claims that the chief virtue of his newly learned language
is that it allows him to curse, Caliban here shows himself capable
of using speech in a most sensitive and beautiful fashion. This
speech is generally considered to be one of the most poetic in the
play, and it is remarkable that Shakespeare chose to put it in the
mouth of the drunken man-monster. Just when Caliban seems to have
debased himself completely and to have become a purely ridiculous
figure, Shakespeare gives him this speech and reminds the audience
that Caliban has something within himself that Prospero, Stephano,
Trinculo, and the audience itself generally cannot, or refuse to,
see. It is unclear whether the “noises” Caliban discusses are the
noises of the island itself or noises, like the music of the invisible
Ariel, that are a result of Prospero’s magic. Caliban himself does
not seem to know where these noises come from. Thus his speech conveys
the wondrous beauty of the island and the depth of his attachment
to it, as well as a certain amount of respect and love for Prospero’s
magic, and for the possibility that he creates the “[s]ounds and
sweet airs that give delight and hurt not.”
